lecture programs

SMU’s Center for Presidential History will look back at the victories, defeats and head-scratchers from President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office during a panel discussion at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 27, 2017 in the Mack Ballroom, Umphrey Lee Center.

The panel will feature perspectives from SMU faculty members specializing in history and communications, as well as from the CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and the deputy editorial page editor of The Dallas Morning News.

A light coffee will precede the event at 6:30 p.m. The event is free; RSVPs are required. Free passes will be emailed to registered guests before the event. Seating is limited, and not guaranteed.

“The first 100 days is crucial for setting the tone of a presidency,” said Center for Presidential History Director Jeffrey Engel. “You shouldn’t look so much to measure accomplishments, but rather style and efficiency, which is all the more intriguing when we have an administration with historically limited levels of experience.”

The first female editor of a national sports magazine, Overholt will speak about her experiences in rising to the top in a male-dominated industry, and about the growing prominence of women in sports. Admission is free, and tickets are not required. For further information call 214-768-3695.

Overholt serves as editor-in-chief of both ESPN The Magazine (since February 2016), a biweekly print publication, and espnW (since April 2014), a digital product suite targeted to female athletes and their fans. At espnW, she is responsible for developing comprehensive content strategies through digital, mobile, social, print, video and events. At ESPN The Magazine, she drives collaborative, innovative approaches to storytelling, with oversight of producing ESPN’s multiplatform enterprise content. Under her direction, ESPN The Magazine has won the magazine industry’s highest honor, the 2017 National Magazine Award for General Excellence.

The William J. O’Neil Lecture Series in Business Journalism is presented by the Division of Journalism in SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts. The O’Neil Lecture Series brings outstanding business journalism professionals to the SMU campus each semester. It is part of a cooperative program in financial reporting developed in 2007 by the Meadows School Division of Journalism and the Cox School of Business, through funding from William J. O’Neil, an SMU alumnus and chairman and CEO of Investor’s Business Daily.

Brandon Stanton, the creator and bestselling author of the Humans of New York series, will deliver the Ebby Halliday Companies Lecture in SMU’s Willis M. Tate Lecture Series Tuesday, March 7, 2017. The lecture will begin at 8 p.m. in McFarlin Auditorium.

Stanton studied at the University of Georgia and worked as a bond trader in Chicago before starting Humans of New York – a photography and storytelling blog – in the summer of 2010. What began as a project to photograph 10,000 people on the streets of New York City became much more as Stanton started to add quotes and interviews to his portraits and providing “daily glimpses into the lives of strangers.” Since then, HONY has built a following of close to 20 million fans across several social media platforms.

In addition, Stanton has appeared on “Ellen,” “Good Morning America,” “Nightline,” MSNBC and CNN, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Mashable and dozens of other media venues.

He has also been named a “person of the week” on “The ABC Evening News with Diane Sawyer,” named to TIME Magazine’s “30 Under 30 Who Are Changing the World,” and has photographed President Obama in the Oval Office. He has taken his work to some of the world’s most remote and troubled regions, and has used the storytelling power of his site to raise money for several life-changing altruistic purposes.

All SMU community members are invited to the Turner Construction/Wells Fargo Student Forum at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 7, in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center Ballroom. Doors open at 4 p.m. Tweet questions for Brandon Stanton to #SMUtate.

Tickets for the evening event are sold out. However, students can go to the basement of McFarlin Auditorium at 7 p.m. with their SMU IDs for possible seating on a first-come, first-served basis.

Wendy Davis, former Texas state senator and 2014 candidate for Texas governor, will deliver the keynote address in SMU’s 2017 Women’s Symposium Wednesday, March 8.

“We invited Wendy Davis to be our keynote speaker because she was a major advocate for women during her time in the Texas Senate and during her gubernatorial campaign,” said Aurora Havens, Women’s Symposium co-chair and a senior engineering major. “We believe she is an inspiration to all women, especially in Texas.”

The theme of the student-planned 2017 symposium, “My Body, Not Their Politics,” will focus on the politics surrounding issues such as sexual violence, reproductive justice, and women and politics.

“The theme addresses issues women face as well as the current political climate,” Havens says. Sachi Sarwal, a junior electrical engineering major, is also co-chair.

An attorney and long-time public servant, Davis served on the Fort Worth City Council from 1999 to 2008. She represented District 10 in the Texas Senate from 2009 to 2015, but made her mark nationally with an impassioned 11-hour filibuster in June 2013 that delayed passage of a bill restricting abortion regulations in Texas. She ran for governor on the Democratic ticket in 2014, losing to Republican Greg Abbott.

In 2016, Davis launched a new initiative, Deeds Not Words, designed to train and equip young women to make changes in their communities.

More than 500 attendees are expected to attend SMU Women’s Symposium, created in 1966 as part of the University’s commemoration of its 50th anniversary. One of the longest running events of its kind, the symposium has challenged, changed and broadened women’s perspectives on campus and in the community.

The symposium is open to the public from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Hughes-Trigg Student Center. Discounted registration is offered to SMU faculty, staff and students. Visit www.smu.edu/womsym for registration. Registration is requested by Wednesday, March 1, 2017.

Former Bill Clinton White House press secretary Mike McCurry, now a professor at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., will speak at SMU on “Faith, Politics and Civil Dialogue in the Age of Trump: Can the Center Hold?” at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 2, in the Vester Hughes Auditorium, Caruth Hall, Lyle School of Engineering.

McCurry was Clinton’s press secretary from 1995-98, during the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He now dedicates himself to the study and promotion of civil, inclusive dialogue among people who disagree, both in church and in politics.

“As White House press secretary during the period leading up to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, Mike McCurry was on the front lines of an administration dealing with scandal and a hostile press,” said Center for Faith and Learning director Matthew Wilson. “In this time of heightened tension and increasingly angry divisions along political, religious, and cultural lines, Mike McCurry will share his insights on how to disagree civilly and to find common ground even in the face of profound differences.”

The day culminates with the Nate and Ann Levine Lecture in Jewish Studies by sociologist Sylvia Barack Fishman, co-director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and Joseph and Esther Foster Professor of Contemporary Jewish Life at Brandeis University. She will speak on “Diverse Jewish Families in 21st-Century America.”

The global and historical impact of the Russian Revolution of February and October 1917 is the topic for the 2017 Stanton Sharp Symposium on Feb. 22-23, sponsored by SMU’s Clements Department of History.

The two-day event will examine the classic model for the so-called “color revolutions” of the 21st century and the fresh prominence of Russia and Russian history on the world stage. Leading scholars will explore new questions and share their original research on 1917. The schedule:

Captain Scott Kelly, the first American astronaut to complete a year-long mission in space, will speak at the Tolleson Lecture of the Willis M. Tate Distinguished Lecture Series at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2016 in McFarlin Auditorium.

Kelly took flight on Expedition 46 to the International Space Station in March 2015. During his year in space, he helped lay the groundwork for the future of space travel and exploration. He also shared hundreds of pictures and messages with the world on Twitter and Instagram.

This historic mission also included a NASA study of twins in space: Kelly’s identical twin, retired NASA astronaut Capt. Mark Kelly, was stationed on the ground as a control model in an experiment to understand how space affects the human body.

Kelly earned his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the State University of New York Maritime College in 1987 and a Master of Science degree in aviation systems from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 1996. Before becoming an astronaut in April 1996, Kelly was a captain in the U.S. Navy.

Captain Kelly’s memoir, Endurance: My Year in Space and Our Journey to Mars, has been optioned by Sony Pictures and will be published in fall 2017.

All SMU community members are invited to the Turner Construction/Wells Fargo Student Forum at 4:30 p.m. in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center Ballroom. Doors open at 4 p.m. Please tweet your questions for the forum to #SMUtate.

Tickets for the evening event are sold out. However, students can go to the basement of McFarlin Auditorium at 7 p.m. with their SMU IDs for possible seating on a first-come, first-served basis.

This story is updated from a version that was published Aug. 17, 2016.

Attorney and author Bryan Stevenson, whose intimate account of politics and error in the U.S. criminal justice system became SMU’s 2016 Common Reading, visits the Hilltop on Thursday, Oct. 13. The Common Reading Public Lecture begins at 4:30 p.m. in McFarlin Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of the criminal justice system.

One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Stevenson into a tangle of conspiracy, political machinations, and legal brinksmanship — and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice. His telling of the McMillian case is captured in Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.

The story is “[e]very bit as moving as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so … a searing indictment of American criminal justice and a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields,” wrote David Cole of The New York Review of Books in his review.

And Stevenson is “doing God’s work fighting for the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless, the vulnerable, the outcast, and those with no hope,” wrote legal writer and novelist John Grisham, author of A Time to Kill, The Client and The Innocent Man.

The event takes place at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19 in Caruth Auditorium, Owen Arts Center. Admission is free, and tickets are not required. The Sammons Lecture Series is presented by the Division of Journalism in SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts.

Steve Pickett is a two-time Emmy Award-winning journalist for CBS 11 News. He has spent 20 of his 34 years in broadcast news in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. He was on air with live reporting the night of the Dallas police ambush shootings. He has been recognized nationally for his coverage of public education, with heavy focus on the Dallas Independent School District. The Press Club of Dallas acknowledged his coverage of Hurricane Katrina. He also was embedded with members of the Texas National Guard in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Pickett has worked in newsrooms in Portland, Oregon; Fresno, California; Oklahoma City; and Wichita Falls. He is a native Oklahoman and a graduate of The University of Oklahoma.

Mike Rawlings was elected mayor of Dallas in 2011 and again in 2015. He is a native of Borger, Texas, and a graduate of Boston College. Following his first election he launched GrowSouth, his signature initiative to spur economic development south of the Trinity River. He has also sought to improve public education and led a campaign against domestic violence, Dallas Men Against Abuse. On the evening of July 7 when four Dallas Police Department officers and one DART officer were killed in an ambush, Mayor Rawlings worked closely with Dallas Police Chief David Brown to assess and end the situation as well as keeping media and the public informed.

Mike Wilson is editor of The Dallas Morning News, responsible for news coverage in print and online. Wilson began his career at the Miami Herald where he worked as a writer and editor. He joined the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times) in 1994, working 18 years as a writer, editor and, finally, managing editor. His staff won two Pulitzer Prizes during his tenure. In 2013 he moved to ESPN as founding managing editor of Nate Silver’s data journalism website, FiveThirtyEight. Wilson graduated from Tufts University. He has written two books, Right on the Edge of Crazy, about the U.S. downhill ski team, and The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison, about the founder of Oracle Corporation.